After all these years in the investments industry, I thought that I’d become irreversibly conditioned to keep all emotion out of the wealth creation process. For example, do you have any idea how many of these hope-greed-denial-fear slides I’ve seen in fund manager presentations?

What it’s trying to depict graphically, is how emotion distorts what should be the fairly straight, upward-sloping line of share prices growing with inflation and domestic economic output. An upward-sloping straight line is what you’d expect from a rational market; the curvy graph is how the market actually grows and declines due to irrational reactions and/or corrections over the short term. Investors’ euphoria or greed causes share (or property) bubbles. This means that investors sometimes end up hugely over-paying for an asset, leading to such a diminished return on their investments, that they would have done better by just leaving their money in a bank account.

So, for years I’ve believed that bringing emotion into your financial plans is always a bad idea. Until I recently read Kiki Theo’s Money Alchemy and had a slight change of heart. Firstly, she points out that wealth is a feeling. While Investec Private Bank may think you have too little assets to become one of their high net worth clients, you may feel wealthy because you have no debt, ample income for your needs and, in reality, no financial worries. Wealth is relative – not a new concept at all.

But Kiki takes the idea of wealth as a feeling a step further. She uses feeling to take you to a place of wealth. If you feel that you haven’t reached the end of your wealth journey yet, how then would that destination feel to you? Is it the feeling of safety when you switch of the lights in your children’s bedroom at night and know that you can provide in all their material needs? Or is it more the excitement of knowing you can catch any plane to a dream destination of your choice at any time, because there is plenty of cash in the bank for luxuries? Focus on that feeling. Hold it in your heart for a few seconds every day.

For the first time, the roots of the word emotion, which loosely translate to energy in motion, make sense to me. Rather than a force to be suppressed, emotion can be a powerful force that carries you to your dream destination, financially and beyond.

Friday morning it happened again. A small commotion, police officers and fingerprint specialists arrive on the scene, and afterwards locks need to be replaced. Although I was lucky this time and found my car with the boot wide open, but still there, the neighbours were less fortunate and lost their car and other valuables. With the previous round of break-ins it was my turn.

Unlike love, very few would say that it’s better to have owned and lost than never to have owned at all. Losing jewellery or gifts that are irreplaceable and carry so much sentimental value always feels pretty senseless. How can you cushion yourself against the blow?

Keep your insurance up to date.

Do you have a household inventory? Check whether the contents cover of your insurance policy has kept up with your purchases. If, for example, the assessor values your household content at R100 000, but you are only covered for R50 000, you carry the excess amount plus 50% of the value of items stolen. If a claim of R10 000 is approved, the insurance company will pay only the 50% risk that it carried (R5 000) less the excess amount. Specifically mention personal purchases, like cameras and spectacles, in the ‘General all-risk’ section of your policy.

Make sure you can prove ownership.

Knowing insurance companies, you’ll probably end up with a ring from Sterns if you don’t have a photograph and the receipt of your Uwe Koetter wedding band. Preferably keep this evidence in a place where the burglars won’t be able to find them, for example on a secure website or as attachments in your Gmail account. Also, specify your jewellery in the ‘specified all-risk’ section of your policy.

Know your rights.

You can appeal when the insurance company does not accept your claim. It may be good to have a broker on your side if you want to win this battle.

Don’t attract attention.

This one I learned from my domestic. Draw the curtains when you’re not home or when you have the garden services/maintenance around the house. What people can’t see, they generally don’t know they want.

Invest in a home safe.

This has saved me plenty of tears with my last burglary. Make sure you bolt it into a corner of a room, where it is most difficult to use leverage to break it out of the wall again.

Despite all of these precautions, I sincerely hope you never need to claim again…